After Ridley Scott’s BLADERUNNER brought the writing of Philip K Dick to a much wider audience, a number of his films have been adapted for the screen or, more correctly, films based on his stories. For the most part, his ideas have been taken and given the Hollywood treatment, often to the chagrin of Dick’s literary fans. Adapting any novel to the screen is no easy task, and Dick’s novels and short stories, with all their concepts and internalisations, even more so. The films that have been made so far stand on their own merits, regardless of their proximity to the source material. You can read more about this Counterfeit Worlds by Brian J Robb.
The latest of Dick’s stories to make it to the screen is A SCANNER DARKLY, one of his more personal stories, with a lot less sci-fi and a lot more about the drug-fueled paranoia that haunted a large part of his life as a writer.
The story is set in the near future where a drug called Substance D, has a grip on the population, and the police and drug enforcement agencies want to discover the source of it. A narc is posing as a user called Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), who lives with three other addicts. The police are convinced Arctor is the man that will lead them to the “Mr Big”. Unfortunately they don’t know Arctor is working for them because the undercover agents have their anonymity protected, even from each other, with a device known as a scramble suit that disguises the wearer’s appearance and voice. As a result Arctor has to carry out surveillance on himself, and his world starts falling apart.
Director, Richard Linklater, has adapted the screenplay, and to his credit has remained very faithful to the original story, even down to using chunks of the book’s dialogue, which is just as well because there seems little point in trying to reinvent the obtuse conversations Dick wrote. The cast do a fantastic job with the material. Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr make great stoners, having plenty to draw on from their publicised personal lives.
One of the big selling points of the film is the animation, or interpolated rotoscoping to give it its correct name. Shot as live action, the film was passed through a proprietary software, like a glorified Photoshop filter, that gives it the look of animation. I couldn’t help wondering if it was really worth the effort. Although it does bestow a dreamlike feel to the movie (it’s the same technique Linklater used in WAKING LIFE), it could polarise audiences, or potential audiences, The animation purists may find its computer generated imagery a cop out, while other viewers may find the technique a bit distracting. What it has achieved is a string of made jokes and puns like, “Robert Downey is looking very drawn again” and Keanu Reeves most animated performance”, The actors give great performances but a lot of it is lost beneath the layers of colour. The film would have worked equally well without the rotoscoping, and simply utilising a different colour grading to alter the appearnce to make it look hyper-real or grungy, either would work. With only the scramble suit and a few bugs to create in CGI it would have been well within the capabilities of modern special effects.
Having said that, once you enter into the ‘animated’ world the film does keep you enthralled, although that probably more due to the script and acting. There are some great laugh-out-loud moments and some emotional ones too. For fans of PKD it is finally an opportunity to see one of his stories told on screen as he wrote it.
A SCANNER DARKLY is on general release now.